


A Way to Help

by laireshi



Category: Shades of Magic - V. E. Schwab
Genre: Angst, Blood Drinking, Fix-It, M/M, blood bonds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:06:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21910444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laireshi/pseuds/laireshi
Summary: On Athos' orders, Kell drinks Holland's blood.
Relationships: Kell Maresh/Holland Vosijk
Comments: 20
Kudos: 87
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	A Way to Help

**Author's Note:**

  * For [labocat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/labocat/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide!

The air inside the White London royal castle was freezing, and yet it was suffocating in the way the hottest day of Red London never managed to achieve. Stifling. Kell couldn’t breathe. He needed to escape, but he couldn’t, not without offending the Danes; a suicidal idea at best. At worst . . . 

Holland stood there, still as a dead figure, his wrist extended over the goblet, knife next to his skin, but not cutting yet.

“Your Majesty, I have no taste for blood. Could I trouble you for something else?” Kell asked, hoping against all hope for Athos’ mercy.

He was a fool. Holland with his skin covered in scars upon scars proved just how capable of mercy Athos and Astrid Dane were. 

“Nonsense,” Athos laughed. “Have you ever tasted _Antari_ blood?”

Kell bit down on his lip, trying to spin a quick lie, but the king saw right through him.

“I insist,” Athos said. “It’ll be something you’ll _never_ forget.” He swiped his eyes over Holland’s figure. “ _Cut_.”

Holland did. He didn’t even look at his wrist or the knife; his eyes fixed somewhere in space as if he was used to bleeding himself at his king and queen’s whims. His face was impassive, like the pain didn’t matter.

Kell’s stomach churned as he watched the scene, feeling as if, somehow, he’d been paralyzed and forced to participate.

Athos nodded once the goblet was full. “Give it to our guest.”

Kell opened his mouth to protest again, but there was something behind Holland’s eyes as he looked at him now; a warning, a reminder. Holland had fought the Danes, and this is what he ended up as.

He walked to Kell slowly but steadily, never giving Athos and Astrid the chance to accuse him of stalling. The cut on his arm was slowly healing. He offered Kell the goblet silently like it was mere wine.

Kell tried to convince himself that it was—the colour was similar enough—but he couldn’t; the truth of the liquid revealed in its heavy, metallic scent as he raised the cup to his mouth under Athos’ watchful gaze.

He drank.

Holland’s blood was hot and thick, difficult to swallow if only because of its nature. Power ran through it; enough power that even Kell, an _Antari_ himself, could feel it was immense. In a world like White London, Holland’s blood had to be the ultimate treasure.

It made him sick, but he forced himself to swallow another mouthful so that Athos would be satisfied and not insist that Kell drink more.

Once he moved to give the goblet back, Kell realised Holland’s eyes had been trained on his face the whole time. 

***

Kell barely remembered how he got back home after that. He stumbled through the palace and then the White London streets without seeing them; without seeing anything but Holland’s eyes on his face as he drank his blood. 

He walked as if feverish or drunk on something more potent than any alcohol could ever be. Another _Antari_ ’s blood set his veins on fire and he couldn’t shake the sensation. Back into his chamber, he threw himself on the bed while the room spun around him, and tried to make sense of what had just happened.

Instead, he fell into a fitful sleep, more exhausting than staying awake would’ve been. He couldn’t remember what he saw in his dreams, but he could remember what he _heard_ : screams, almost inhuman howls of pain the likes of which he could never have imagined.

He woke up drenched in sweat with his heart beating too fast; it was only when he poured ice cold water over his face that he realised he knew the voice.

It was Holland’s.

***

He stumbled around the streets of Red London as if in a trance. It was a warm, sunny day; the flowers were blooming, their scent permeating the air, and he could hear the cheerful market. It was nothing like White London, and yet, every time he glimpsed someone tall, pale, and dark-haired, he spun around, but he was never met with those unsettling, mismatched eyes.

It was just a nightmare. He didn’t know what was wrong with him to be so shaken.

(A nightmare, like it wasn’t real, only he’d seen the scars on Holland’s body and he’d drunk his blood on Holland’s king’s orders.)

It took all of his willpower not to throw away the goblet of red wine served for dinner.

Then he thought better and downed it, and another one, and another; let the wine drown out any nightmares. 

(When he finally slept, there was nothing but blood and more screams inside his dreams.)

***

He went to Grey London, as if the magicless city could help his very much magical problem.

(Problem, as if. It wasn’t a _problem_ , just his inability to forget the taste of Holland’s blood in his mouth.)

He did find an answer of a sort there.

He spotted a patch of pure white, as out of place here as pure black was out of place in White London, and turned to finally see Holland staring back at him. He was impassive, cold like his world, composed like he hadn’t opened his veins for Kell to drink.

Kell didn’t know how to talk to him now.

“So it’s true,” Holland said like it explained anything at all.

“How did you find me?” Kell asked.

Holland raised an eyebrow. “How do you know I was looking for you?”

Kell frowned. It’d been a meaningless question, but now that Holland asked him one of his own in return, he understood that he had meant it, and that he had known Holland had come to Grey London for him. He couldn’t explain how, but the knowledge was clear and certain in his mind.

“I just . . .” Kell trailed off. Holland was dangerous. Admitting ignorance would not be a good idea.

Dangerous, and screaming in his world when Kell slept. This too was suddenly just a fact: it wasn’t a nightmare or memories that Kell could hear in his dreams; just Holland’s _now_.

“I just knew,” Kell said at last. “ _Why_ were you looking for me, though?”

Holland just looked at him for a long while. Kell thought he wouldn’t be getting any answer after all, but then Holland said, very, very quietly, “I smelt lilac yesterday.” 

Not a plant that could survive in the icy, dying world. Kell was surprised Holland even knew the name, much less could identify it. Or—

It was Kell who’d walked past lilac bushes yesterday.

“ _How_ ,” Kell demanded.

This time, Holland didn’t say anything.

It dawned on Kell, at last, his dreams and Holland’s confession putting themselves together into something resembling an explanation: illogical, impossible, unimaginable, but an explanation nonetheless.

“Your blood,” he breathed.

Holland nodded stiffly. 

“I dreamt of you,” Kell said, which was a horrible way to describe it, but he couldn’t bring himself to say the truth about it. 

“That’d explain why you look like that,” Holland muttered. Then he met Kell’s eyes straight on, serious. “Do _not_ return to my world.”

“Not quite up to me, I’m afraid,” Kell said drily, trying to hide that his first, instinctual reaction was to yell, _No_.

“Right,” Holland drawled. “You truly have no free will at all. How horrible it must be.”

 _I have orders_ , Kell thought, but it felt inane now that he’d witnessed what orders _Holland_ had.

“Stay away,” Holland repeated. “At least until this”—he gestured between them—“disappears.”

“Will it?” 

“Pray that it does,” Holland said, and then he was gone.

***

The connection didn’t go away.

Kell went through what little information on the _Antari_ there was available, but none of that told him anything about potential blood bonds, or whatever it was that was happening between the two of them now.

He slept badly. When he didn’t hear Holland’s screams, he woke up cold, his joints aching with the freezing temperatures of White London as if he’d walked its streets clad only in his pyjamas. Other days he woke up with his hands covered in blood that didn’t seem to be his.

If Holland could still smell the Red London flowers or feel its sun, he didn’t come to tell Kell about it.

It left him uneasy. Worried, even. 

He remembered when he learnt of Holland’s story, the reason why he was serving the Danes. It had horrified Kell, of course, and it made him appreciate his own situation, but at the end of the day, it wasn’t his business. He could do nothing for Holland, and so he shouldn’t think of him too much.

But now it was different. Now Holland was a part of his thoughts.

And there had to be a way.

***

The next time Kell dreamt, he did so with a purpose. He thought of Holland, his voice and his eyes and his blood, and he willed him to hear Kell too.

He was lucky. It was one of those black, dreamless nights full of cold, but not pain. Kell wasn’t sure if it was the times when Holland was allowed to sleep too or if he was just out of the palace on errands, but he was grateful that it wasn’t one of the _bad_ moments.

“Holland,” he said.

It was weird. He couldn’t see Holland’s face, but he could sense his surprise. “I told you to stay away.”

“Well, waiting uselessly didn’t seem to help any.”

“Ah, because talking will.” Holland’s scorn was clear. “What do you want?”

Kell hesitated. “Other nights,” he said at last, loathe to admit it but needing Holland to understand, “I hear you scream.”

There was no emotional reaction from Holland, which was perhaps the scariest thing of all. “Do you expect me to apologise for interrupting your beauty sleep?”

Kell wanted to shake him. “Tell me how to help.”

Holland laughed at him. “ _Help_ ,” he replied like the word was mocking him. “You’re safe and your world is alive and you think this means you can do something?”

“I hear you in my dreams and you can tell what I’m doing when you’re awake; don’t act like it’s nothing,” Kell snapped.

“It’s not,” Holland agreed. “But there is _nothing_ either of us can do to change it, Kell.” 

There: the way he’d known that Holland had been looking for him all those weeks ago, now Kell knew that Holland was lying to him.

“There must be something,” Kell insisted. It felt like he was begging. “There _is_ something.”

Finally, his voice hollow and defeated, and his soul calm, Holland told him, “The spell is _As Matar_.”

And Kell understood at once: what it was that Holland truly asked of him, and what it was that he had to do now.

He woke up.

***

The rulers of Red London rarely contacted White London, but Kell had carried enough of the letters to know the drill. He couldn’t keep waiting for the next time he was ordered to carry an official message, so he wrote one of his own and sealed it with the royal seal.

Possibly, it was treason. Possibly, he did not care.

White London, once he stepped inside, made his skin crawl more than it usually did. It wasn’t the biting cold itself: it was the fact that it was _familiar_ ; a horrific feeling.

He made for the castle, the letter in one hand and a small knife in his pocket.

This time it was Athos who received him first, seated on his white throne, sipping from a goblet. He smiled when Kell’s eyes fixed themselves on his drink unwillingly.

“Just wine, I’m afraid. Why? Did you develop a taste for blood after all?”

He didn’t ask for the letter, so Kell had to consciously stop himself from closing his hands into his fists and crumpling it. 

“I’m afraid not, Your Highness.”

Just then, Astrid walked in, Holland trailing after her like an obedient ghost. There was a slowly healing gash on his cheek that reminded Kell that he was right to come. Holland’s green eye widened in surprise when he saw Kell, but he kept walking steadily until he stood behind Athos’ throne.

Astrid gestured at Kell with one thin finger. “Show me the letter.”

Kell walked towards her slowly. He extended his hand, passed her the forged letter. 

He nicked his left hand on the blade hidden in his clothes and said, loud and clear, “ _As Matar_.”

The effect was both immediate and powerful beyond all imagination like all the _Antari_ spells; understated like little of them: between one syllable and the next left Kell’s mouth, Astrid simply . . . stopped breathing.

The pull on Kell’s own power wasn’t as unnoticeable. He swayed on his legs as the wound he’d made on his palm opened itself further, blood flowing freely from it. 

It was good, he reminded himself. He needed the blood for the next spell.

There was a heavy sensation in his legs, like being frozen to the ground, and something foreign encroaching on his mind, and he looked at Athos to see the king surrounded by power. 

“ _Kill him_ ,” Athos ordered Holland, but it was too late.

Kell focused on him and repeated his own spell. 

Athos fell down without a further word.

Kell hadn’t realised he was falling, too, before he hit the floor.

There were hands on him, and more blood, and a voice, so very familiar by now, whispering, urgent, “As Hasari,” once, then again. 

The healing energy washed over him, and he must’ve blacked out for a moment, because when he came to, his head was resting on something soft, and he found himself looking at Holland, his cloak and shirt off. There was a web of scars running across his chest—and a dark seal over his heart, disappearing as if it was bleeding ink into nothing.

So it hadn't been just the pin binding him, then.

“It worked,” Kell croaked out, still feeling horribly weak. 

And Holland—Holland _smiled_.


End file.
